Dispatches from the new Russian empire

“Still, if there’s any hope for Russia, it’s in the idea that democracy will percolate up from youth and the internet, rather than being demanded in some kind of revolution. As Prokhorov says, “every time we have a revolution, it was a very bloody period”. Russian democracy is not going to mean a US-style free-market economy: Russia tried that, in the 1990s, with disastrous results for the broad population. But a wired country is, by its nature, always going to be a little less corrupt. And a little more hopeful.”